Now the frogs are busy, and the land lizards come forth.  Even these the moucher sometimes captures; for there is nothing so strange but that some one selects it for a pet.  The mad March hares scamper about in broad daylight over the corn, whose pale green blades rise in straight lines a few inches above the soil.  They are chasing their skittish loves, instead of soberly dreaming the day away in a bunch of grass.  The ploughman walks in the furrow his share has made, and presently stops to measure the ‘lands’ with the spud.  His horses halt dead in the tenth of a second at the sound of his voice, glad to rest for a minute from their toil.  Work there is in plenty now, for stone-picking, hoeing, and other matters must be attended to; but the moucher lounges in the road decoying chaffinches, or perhaps earns a shilling by driving some dealer’s cattle home from fair and market.

By April his second great crop is ready—­the watercress; the precise time of course varies very much, and at first the quantities are small.  The hedges are now fast putting on the robe of green that gradually hides the wreck of last year’s growth.  The withered head of the teazle, black from the rain, falls and disappears.  Great burdock stems lie prostrate.  Thick and hard as they are while the sap is still in them, in winter the wet ground rots the lower part till the blast overthrows the stalk.  The hollow ‘gicks’ too, that lately stood almost to the shoulder, is down, or slanting, temporarily supported by some branch.  Just between the root and the stalk it has decayed till nothing but a narrow strip connects the dry upper part with the earth.  The moucher sells the nests and eggs of small birds to townsfolk who cannot themselves wander among the fields, but who love to see something that reminds them of the green meadows.

As the season advances and the summer comes he gathers vast quantities of dandelion leaves, parsley, sowthistle, clover, and so forth, as food for the tame rabbits kept in towns.  If his haunt be not far from a river, he spends hours collecting bait—­worm and grub and fly—­for the boatmen, who sell them again to the anglers.

Again there is work in the meadows—­the haymaking is about, and the farmers are anxious for men.  But the moucher passes by and looks for quaking grass, bunches of which have a ready sale.  Fledgeling goldfinches and linnets, young rabbits, young squirrels, even the nest of the harvest-trow mouse, and occasionally a snake, bring him in a little money.  He picks the forget-me-nots from the streams and the ‘blue-bottle’ from the corn:  bunches of the latter are sometimes sold in London at a price that seems extravagant to those who have seen whole fields tinted with its beautiful azure.  By-and-by the golden wheat calls for an army of workers; but the moucher passes on and gathers groundsel.